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Astronaut Alum Giving Speech For UND Graduation

GRAND FORKS, N.D. (AP) — University of North Dakota summer graduates are getting some words of wisdom from the university’s out-of-this-world alumnus.

The keynote address during the Friday afternoon summer commencement ceremony will be by astronaut and UND alum Karen Nyberg. She’s currently orbiting the Earth in the International Space Station, and NASA is delivering her recorded message.

Nyberg is the first UND graduate to go into space, and the 50th woman to do so. She’s done it twice. The 1994 graduate from Vining, Minn., first traveled to the International Space Station aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 2008. She made her second journey on a Russian Soyuz capsule that blasted off from Kazakhstan in late May. She’s to return late this year.